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Microsoft's OneDrive Web App Crippled With Performance Issues On Linux and Chrome OS (theregister.co.uk)
Iain Thomson, reporting for The Register: Plenty of Linux users are up in arms about the performance of the OneDrive web app. They say that when accessing Microsoft's cloudy storage system in a browser on a non-Windows system -- such as on Linux or ChromeOS -- the service grinds to a barely usable crawl. But when they use a Windows machine on the same internet connection, speedy access resumes. Crucially, when they change their browser's user-agent string -- a snippet of text the browser sends to websites describing itself -- to Internet Explorer or Edge, magically their OneDrive access speeds up to normal on their non-Windows PCs. In other words, Microsoft's OneDrive web app slows down seemingly deliberately when it appears you're using Linux or some other Windows rival. This has been going on for months, and complaints flared up again this week after netizens decided enough is enough. When gripes about this suspicious slowdown have cropped up previously, Microsoft has coldly reminded people that OneDrive for Business is not supported on Linux, thus the crap performance is to be expected. But when you change the user-agent string of your browser on Linux to match IE or Edge, suddenly OneDrive's web code runs fine. The original headline of the story is, "Microsoft loves Linux so much, its OneDrive web app runs like a dog on Windows OS rivals".
If you are a professional programmer and were asked to do this, what would you do?
I wouldn't do it.
.... same as the old MS.
Drop OneDrive and use something that doesn't disrespect your choices.
More likely the Program Manager is saying "Good work guys! It works perfectly."
There isn't any legitimate reason for the useragent to be screwing it up like this.
The job ain't done until Linux won't run
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
A bug in Chrome? Fixed by a change in the user agent string to make the browser look like Internet Explorer or Edge?
You don't belong on the internet. Go back to your job at Radio Shack.
Actually, I deal with an internal web app that does something similar, poor performance with diffing agent strings being presented, between IE9/11, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browsers hitting it and getting very very different experiences.
The cause is attempts at code optimizations, some not done well at all. Despite their best efforts, none of our tech teams can blame some grand conspiracy with Microsoft, since no motive exists for this.
But our users find evidence when IE works so much better than, for instance, Chrome. Until a month ago, that is, when the JVMs got to be working properly, and woot, now IE is the slog despite working just as before, and Chrome is blazingly fast. Now it's a grand conspiracy to kill IE use at the enterprise level.
Ya can't win, ya know. whatever you do, if the browsers get different performance results, you're doing it deliberately, because there is some reason...
More reason to avoid web programming. Servicing is still a sweet spot around here.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Because it's not a bug to fix, if they're checking the user agent string and explicitly throttling performance then this clearly must be intentional sabotage to try and make competing platforms look bad.
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